(Illustration by Luca Di Bartolomeo)
Patrick Awuah escaped life under military dictatorship in Ghana and left his home to attend college in the United States. He settled in Seattle, built a successful career as a Microsoft program manager, married an American, and started a family. He had left Ghana behind and resolved never to return. A few years later, however, Patrick’s first child was born, triggering a latent restlessness. He knew Africa would matter to his children, to the way they would see themselves, and to the way the world would see them. He began to think about going back to Ghana and knew if he returned it would have to be in the capacity of service. But what could his contribution be?
Patrick found the answer in education. He believed there was a causal relationship between Ghana’s traditional approach to schooling, which had roots in colonization, and the poor leadership he saw at all levels of the country. While he would ultimately go on to found Ashesi University, the premiere liberal arts university in Africa (now ranked first in Ghana and among the world’s top 300 universities in the 2022 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings), it took some time before he felt ready to act: “I was stalling because of fear of failure. But if I didn’t try, I would have failed anyway—so why not try?”
This is not a unique leadership story, but it’s an illustrative one, filled with exactly the kind of vision and stamina required to make change. Through our work supporting networks of leaders at the Aspen Institute, on whose board of trustees we both sit, and at our own organizations, Acumen and the McNulty Foundation, we have encountered hundreds of remarkable stories like Patrick’s, and we have had the fortune to meet, understand, and uplift ambitious individuals from all corners of the world. Some have modified their corporations’ missions to center social impact rather than just profit, while others have left the corporate world altogether to work in service of marginalized communities. Some are journalists who have stood up to death threats, autocratic regimes, and cultures of corruption to publish life-changing stories and reveal power-challenging truths. Some have come together from across backgrounds and beliefs to reimagine the systems we live within.
So, we asked ourselves: What do all of these leaders share? What drives them to direct or redirect their lives, to tackle seemingly intractable problems, and to stay true to their values in the face of enormous challenges? After reflecting on the journeys of these individuals, we believe we have found the common thread: moral courage.
We see moral courage as the single most important attribute that social change leaders can possess. Moral courage is the commitment to act upon one’s values regardless of the difficulty or personal cost. It inspires the conviction to take action with the clarity to remain constant in goals but flexible in method. Moral courage is a mindset that centers the internal conditions needed to make the courageous choice visible and to instill the confidence that it’s possible.
Equally, moral courage is the determination and resilience required to try and fail as you attempt to address some of society’s biggest inequities—to stumble and get back up again. It is to persist when everything is falling apart around you, to endure the trials of the arena not just for months or years but, often, for a lifetime.
Moral courage, we believe, is not something you are born with—it must be cultivated and developed. Through our work, we have seen practices that help to identify, foster, direct, and sustain this courage. The Aspen leadership programs and fellowships take participants through an intensive two-year process that aims to help leaders awaken and clarify their values, elevate their moral courage, and channel their leadership toward solving our greatest challenges. We have seen leaders go through that journey and emerge stronger, more effective, and more resourceful in their pursuit of social change. The process is rooted in transformation of self, and in turn, creates ripples that transform the communities, organizations, and systems in which they lead and live.
If we are going to make change on the scale of the problems that the world faces, we need more people to answer the call to act in the face of injustice. We need a movement of authentic leaders and sustainable leadership guided by moral courage. And we need a chorus of funders and supporters who recognize the tough journey that social innovators take and who will invest in them for the long haul.
How to Cultivate Moral Courage
We believe that anyone—and everyone—can cultivate moral courage. It is a practice; a disciplined “workout of moral muscles” that gets stronger with use. No matter where you operate within the ecosystem of social change, these practices can help you lead well and justly. It is the work of all of us to reimagine and rebuild systems in ways that prioritize our shared humanity and the sustainability of our planet and communities, and it begins with a few fundamental practices to step up and step into this work:
1. Practice Self-Awareness
Mustering the will to act with moral courage in a sustainable way is not a spontaneous act. In fact, it requires a healthy amount of perspective and self-awareness to do it right. Self-aware leaders tend to lead less with ego and more with conviction. They’re often better able to articulate their vision and to mitigate their own misperceptions and biases.
Developing self-awareness takes work and must start from within, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be done alone: We’ve observed many guided seminars and workshops from the Aspen fellowships to Seeds of Peace and Acumen Academy that have created space for this to happen. The Wellbeing Project has documented the benefits of self-inquiry, which helps leaders create a thorough understanding of the deeply personal experiences, values, and beliefs that animate and drive them. Creating the space for a leader to ask themself questions and recognize patterns within their own behavior is a powerful practice.
For Patrick Awuah, the tipping point came while sitting around the seminar table with 24 leaders from across West Africa, diverse by every measure. They gathered for seven days to use texts to explore timeless human values, grapple with their own values in tension, and cultivate a richer understanding of what makes a good society—and their role in creating it. It was a pivotal reading and discussion of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas in which Patrick’s values were awakened and clarified. Patrick’s dream of building a liberal arts college in Ghana meant leaving behind a comfortable life—the metaphorical Omelas—to embrace the unknown. In his own words, he realized that he needed to commit: “Even though we don’t know what the end of the story could be, we need to be writing the story.”
Becoming more self-aware requires pushing against the boundaries and assumptions that permeate our systems and beliefs. That means thinking about who is—and who is not—in the room when decisions are being made; it also means getting used to being uncomfortable. Until we know ourselves, and can master our own passions, it is difficult to understand others.
2. Examine, Sharpen, and Clarify Core Values in Dialogue With Others
Aspiring leaders need others to challenge their deeply held beliefs in order to sharpen their ideas and to shore up the weaker aspects of their vision. Surrounding oneself with peers who are not afraid to push back is key to strengthening not only one’s leadership skills but the ability to execute. Respectful sparring shakes up a leader’s internal status quo and opens up the possibility of transformation, perception shift, and consideration that a leader’s preferred way might not be the only way (or even the right way).
Building opportunities and spaces to help clarify a leader’s values is paramount, often in dialogue with leaders from across sectors and backgrounds in a closed-door setting. A critical precondition for authentic dialogue is laying norms and ground rules, with full group buy-in. These agreements might include commitments to keep confidentiality, to engage with an open heart, and yes, to disagree—but with the desire to understand and learn, not with the desire to “win.”
Moments that allow for honest, non-performative self-evaluation are rare in modern society. If leaders have no place to go to explore ideas, make mistakes, and even be inelegant in the way they process ideas—to practice sitting with the tension between their own beliefs and someone else’s—they’ll be less prepared to lead with confidence, conviction, and care. Now more than ever, leaders need gathering places, curated with intention and rooted in trust, to engage with people in deep, authentic, and courageous dialogue. Some organizations are doing great work in this area, but we believe more funders and supporters need to do more to invest in creating and offering these spaces.
3. Create Systems of Trust and Nourishment
Helming an organization as it endeavors to change unjust systems takes a serious toll. Leadership is lonely. Burnout is a constant threat. How do leaders sustain themselves? Who do they need in their court to keep them going? Where do they go to continually test their assumptions?
This is where a group of trusted peers is necessary. They can hold one to account while also supporting ambitions. Leaders with this kind of community are much better equipped to navigate the challenges of moral leadership. Fellowship cohorts put together by leadership-supporting organizations often serve this purpose. But there’s room for funders to take an even more proactive convening role to build community amongst their grantees and laureates and help those leaders build peer networks. In addition, a personal board of advisors and mentors, combining both personal and professional relationships, can help leaders find the nourishment they need to stay in the fight, especially when success feels most uncertain.
Sam Goldman and Ned Tozun, the co-founders of d.light, a distributed solar lighting and power systems company that has transformed the way people across the world access and pay for energy, understand the benefits of a support system and a solid foundation of trust. Witnessing a kerosene lantern tip over and light his neighbor’s hut ablaze in his Nigerian village spurred Sam to commit himself to bringing safe, clean power to those without access to it—and he found true partnership in Ned, who he met after returning to the US and enrolling in Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class. But building d.light into the company it is today, one that has transformed 100+ million lives across 70 countries, took years. Had they understood the challenges they would face in building a viable company, they may never have started. But they stayed focused on their mission—using each other to test ideas, remind themselves of their vision, and find the nourishment to keep going. The d.light founders never took their eyes off their north star: energy access for all people. A singular focus combined with a strong and supportive board and patient investors reinforced their commitment to the goal.
No matter who you are, the work of change is hard. Along with practicing courage, leaders would do well to engage in practices and principles of self-renewal and re-nourishment. Some leaders spend time in nature to slow down and experience wonder. Others use art or literature or a spiritual practice as a touchstone. Funders have a role to play in this as well, investing in spaces for leaders to revisit core ideals or to join in community with others to share tribulations as well as joy. Supporting that renewal can reinspire or reanimate the urgency to act, and urgency is what we need right now.
Supporting and Sustaining Moral Leaders for the Long Haul
The journey toward creating social change is lifelong work. It can be slow, unkind, and personally demanding. Imagine the founder of a nation’s first liberal arts university who is struggling to get necessary mid-stage funding to continue an already successful program. Or imagine an eye doctor who has helped thousands of patients who realizes he has to leave his training and comfort zone behind in order to attack the problem on a more systemic level. Or a woman working to eliminate racial disparities in health-care outcomes whose core intervention is made impossible by a novel global pandemic.
Again and again, we have seen entrepreneurial leaders stay the course through obstacles, mistakes, and setbacks in the pursuit of social impact. Moreover, we have seen them operate from a place of courage and deep conviction in the face of challenges, naysayers, and broken systems resistant to change. And finally, we have seen individuals move on from a leadership role, realizing that their skills, knowledge, and networks could better serve the mission in other ways. This series of essays will share the stories of some of those leaders, examine how they foster moral courage in their roles, and explore ways to strengthen and support leaders throughout their journeys.
Investing in leaders is also a lifelong investment. As funders, supporters, and incubators of authentic and courageous leadership, our role is to recognize this long and sometimes isolating and painful journey. We must support leaders and their organizations not only in moments of recognition and success, but also through inevitable difficulties, failures, and transitions. We each have a role to play in sustaining the systems of trust and nourishment they need to keep going. We need more leaders who can step into the arena against injustice, and we need to redouble our investment in them as they continue to be tested.
For we know they will be tested, especially in the face of growing and intersecting global challenges. And yet, we will press on. Because we have the tools to effect change, and so we must use them.
Moral courage separates the great from the good when it comes to leaders, the paradigm-shifting from the merely incremental. More to the point, moral courage is a trait every one of us needs to cultivate within ourselves. For the changes the world needs are vast. And our time is short.
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Read more stories by Jacqueline Novogratz & Anne Welsh McNulty.